Kasi Stein began work at the Tri-County News as a pre-press technician Wedensday, Sept. 1, and took five minutes out of her already busy schedule to answer a few questions about her previous jobs, view of small town newspapers and hobbies. Q: You’re no stranger to the newspaper business. Tell me a bit about it and how you first got involved. A. Well the first way I got into newspapers was back when my husband was in the service and I wrote a women’s newspaper in Fort Bliss, Texas (Fort Bliss is a camp in El Paso). I did a lot of the stories, I did the camera work as the lieutenant’s wife. It was a military wives’ newspaper and it came out once every three months. Then I moved back to Minnesota – I was born in Illinois and grew up in Florida. I had worked on the school newspaper and school yearbook in high school and college, but nothing big. When I moved to Minnesota, I moved to the Cold Spring area. There were a number of things going on in the area, the St. Cloud Times was not covering it very well, so I called them. And they said “why don’t you write a story and send it to us, and if we like it we’ll print it.” I did and they called me to be a stringer for the Times for a little over a year. The owner of the Cold Spring paper then called and asked me if I would come and work for him. I was going to be the editor (he was going to buy the Watkins paper) and I started doing the writing and editing for the Watkins paper. I was there for three years. Then I left the community and lived in Big Lake and Elk River for several years before coming back with my husband and buying the Cold Spring Record, the Watkins Patriot (and at that time, we owned the St. Joseph paper also). This was in the early ’80s. I worked as the editor, publisher, did layout ads, was a member of the chamber, came up with new ideas for the city, and all kinds of stuff. I did this for 10 years. Q: What is your impression of small-town newspapers? A. It’s a very difficult position to have a small town newspaper. Q: Why is that? A: Well, in a large town, everybody pretty much has an opinion. They read the paper and they garner the news. In a small town, people are already talking, they have an opinion and they like to be able to tell the newspaper editor, because everybody knows everybody, “you should do this or you should do that.”And as a newspaper editor in a small town, even though you have a personal opinion on the how the town should be, you have to put that aside and give the news without bias. That’s really hard in a small town. In a small town, it’s easier to make enemies and you have to have every business and every personal connection you can to make it a viable business. Q: How important are newspapers in small communities? A: I think a newspaper has to be the driving force for growth and innovation. That’s where the first idea should be found. We should be listening and be creative with new ideas for helping the town grow, for hearing what the people want, and trying to bring in those ideas and make those ideas become a fulfillment of what people want in their community. That’s what the newspaper is for. You can’t do that with a computer. You can’t do that with the Internet. Q: In all your years in the newspaper business, what is your fondest memory? A: I think the fondest memories in a newspaper are always the ones where the newspaper has been able to help the growth of the community. One such instance in Cold Spring was when I was the editor and the owner there. We put together a theatrical company and it is a very strong and viable group that is bringing more education about arts and culture into the area. We were putting ads in the paper, putting thoughts in the paper, putting editorial letters that people wrote that helped us to form the group, decide where it was going to go and what it was going to do. Now it has a membership of over 200 people and it is a very vibrant group in the community. It has stretched out and done different things for the community. Q: What is your worst memory? A: One time a fairly good-sized number of men walked into our office and said they were going to sue us for everything that we owned because of something that was put in the paper. It’s your worst nightmare as an editor and owner of a publication (and it happened at our Watkins paper). We had printed something that we trusted one of our employees to be correct about and our employee wasn’t – perhaps unknowingly incorrect. It was a political problem and we rectified it immediately with an extra publication. It was a political survey and the results of the survey had been tampered with. So they (the men) walked out satisfied, but I was sweating for a couple of hours (laughing). Q: Tell me a bit about your hobbies? A: Well, I am a theatre director. I have directed plays for the Paramount Theatre (in St. Cloud), for the Great Northern Theatre Company (in Cold Spring) and for my church. I have my own theatre company called Break A Leg Productions and I love doing theatre. I have 80 boxes of costumes in my home. For other hobbies, I do crafts. I am a photographer; I like to do nature photography and I liked to travel a lot. Q: If you could change one thing in your life, what would it be? A: Probably like everybody else: the mistakes I’ve made. But, I’ve learned far more from the mistakes than doing things right the first time. It makes you look kind of dumb to make mistakes, but it also teaches you a lot about yourself, your character. It helps you understand other people better when you make a mistake. Q: So there isn’t anything you want change. A: No. Not really. I’ve had a very fortunate life.
